23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025
Wisdom 9:13-18 Philemon 9:10, 12-17 Luke 14:25-33
There is a huge contrast between today’s Gospel scene and that of last Sunday. Last week we read of the meal in the house of one of the leading Pharisees. Jesus had been invited and there was a fairly convivial atmosphere with the usual jostling for places at the top-table and for recognition of standing in society etc. The occasion presented Jesus with an opportunity to put across his message of just how disciples should behave in relation to others. Humility, sincerity and truth would be hallmarks of the followers of Jesus. Those who pushed themselves forward as important would not necessarily be respected more than those who quietly took a lower place at table.
Today’s Gospel scene is in stark contrast with the gathering at the Pharisee’s house. The crowds were always following Jesus and all had different motives. Some were just curious, some were attracted by the excitement and the controversies, some were seeking answers or healing, some had political aspirations. So, the teaching of Jesus takes on a different slant, even a harsh slant! But what Jesus says is still down-to-earth and touches a note of reality. Jesus speaks about the cost of discipleship. It is a huge cost! Even the good things of life and what is regarded as sacred might have to be sacrificed. Disciples must be prepared to even break off precious family relationships, if these relationships restrict their following of Jesus. This seems to be inhumane but we know that loving family relationships can only enhance our love for God and his Law.
The life of St Francis of Assisi is a good example of where a parent stood in the way of following the call to be a disciple of Jesus. His father tried to stop him from giving up his comfortable and luxurious life-style for the radical choice to follow the Lord. St Francis responded: ‘Up to now I have called Peter Bernardone my father, but now I can say without reservation, “Our Father in heaven”.’
The demands of discipleship were so radical that in the early Church people began to refer to discipleship as ‘taking up the cross of Jesus’. Their understanding of this was that it required courage and determination and complete confidence and trust in God. This confidence and blind trust in God is powerfully explained in today’s 1st Reading from the Book of Wisdom; ‘The reasonings of mortals are unsure and our intentions unstable; for a perishable body presses down the soul, and this tent of clay weighs down the teeming mind’.
Our ‘teeming minds’ are so preoccupied with so many concerns and issues that we are called to have great detachment in order for those minds to make space for God. Detachment is needed, certainly from unnecessary material things but also from anything emotional or even spiritual, which would lessen our ability to enter into the spirit of Psalm 62 which proclaims; “Only in God will be my soul be at rest; in Him is my hope and salvation”.
That is the cost of discipleship and some of those who have journeyed the whole way with Jesus have testified to the grace of their experience. They concluded that the way of Jesus is, as T.S. Eliot put it, ‘A condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything. And all shall be well and All Manner of thing shall be well’. (Little Gidding – Four Quartets)